This double question is from the W.H. Auden poem, Dog Days.

It’s one I’ve been pondering a lot over the last week, since a dear friend asked me a pointed question.

I was feeling rather low and confused – at an event that I’d committed to, but really didn’t want to be at.

Maybe, as a friend pointed out, it’s because I’m retiring. Yes, I am, but the work was very part-time so I’m not sure it’s going to make much difference.

Yes, she conceded, but you’d been working in that field for a long time: if your life’s like a tent then one of your pegs has come loose and now it’s flapping in the wind.

She also pointed out that something else that we’ve both been very involved with for a very long time is also ending – so that’s two guy ropes floating free. Probably enough to explain my discombobulation, and to have the tent flapping the question: who am I, and why?

Often we define ourselves by what we do, by function, work, job titles. When those ‘doings’ fall away it can throw us into uncertainty. I am hanging on to the knowledge that God knows, that the answer to both those questions is in the loving creativity of God.

That is where ‘being’ comes from, resides. The ‘being’ that enables our ‘doing’.

I can trust that grounding - that guy rope is secure. Maybe some more fresh air in the tent is just what I need.